Links for October 5th

Chattanooga Times-Free Press: 96-year-old Chattanooga resident denied voting IDDorothy Cooper even managed to vote under Jim Crow, but the Tennessee Republican Party has proved to be one obstacle she can't overcome. She's never driven, so she has no driver's license. She tried to get a photo ID, but she has to present her marriage certificate, and she got married a long, long time ago, and doesn't know where to find that. I guess the new photo ID laws are working just as intended.

Flickr: Fed Up with LunchA Flickr stream of nothing but photos of what passes for school lunch in the Chicago Public Schools. Parents never see what the kids get for lunch, but this teacher did. I'd love to see somebody do this in area schools. Heck, the schools should be willing to do it themselves.

New York Times: After Ruling, Hispanics Flee an Alabama TownAlabama's new immigration law has left crops rotting in their fields, farmers unable to find workers. Business at grocery stores and restaurants has evaporated. Hundreds (thousands?) of people working perfectly legal have gotten the message loud and clear: Latinos are not welcome in Alabama. So they're packing up and moving.

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8 thoughts on “Links for October 5th”

My kids’ lunches are even worse nutritionally. They put on the calendar “Whole Grain cereal” and served Fruit Loops! Technically correct, but come on! Also frequently on the menu are French Toast Sticks and Pancakes. I know they have a mandate to self-sustain on budget and hence serve what kids will buy, but it is ridiculous. Victoria and I will be petitioning for change in front of the school board soon!

With picture ID’s it’s probably easier to fix how they are gotten than not using them at all. I have to show ID if I didn’t sign the back of my credit card, cash a check, enter many government buildings, or stopped by an officer of the law.

I have to show ID to buy beer or tobacco,enter a club, or many, many othr things. It helps prevent voter fraud.

I’m still sorry she couldn’t vote but for most people a birth certiciate isn’t that hard to produce. Certainly not for anyone born in the last 50 years.

I’m still sorry she couldn’t vote but for most people a birth certiciate isn’t that hard to produce. Certainly not for anyone born in the last 50 years.

Something like 20% of the U.S. population wasn’t born in the past 50 years, so that’s a problem. The bigger problem is who lacks birth certificates: the poor. Given where this woman lives, her race, and her age, she almost certainly was not born in a hospital, and she probably never had a birth certificates. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (whoever they are) paid Opinion Research to conduct a poll on who does and doesn’t have birth certificates. The results show that one in twenty adults in the U.S. possess neither a birth certificate nor a passport, and that they tend strongly to be poor, black, elderly, and rural, without so much as a high school diploma. That’s 11M Americans who nobody doubts have the right to vote, but are prohibited from doing so under this law.

Any law that has such an effect should never have been considered. Which is why I say that this was the purpose of such a law, because that is the simplest explanation.

She has a birth certificate. But the name didn’t match all of her other documents because she had been married. The clerk asked her to produce her marriage certificate and she couldn’t locate that.

Here are 3 things that are really absurd about her case and thus the law: 1) she is going to vote via an absentee ballot. Photo ID’s are not required for that (so if some entity wanted to commit voter fraud, there ya go), 2) if she lived in an nursing home she’d be exempt and wouldn’t need a photo ID, but 3) she HAS a photo I.D. from the Chattanooga Police Department which people who live in public housing are required to have. But that photo I.D. is not valid for voting.

Oh, and here’s a 4th absurd thing: The state allocated $438,000 to provide the photo ID’s free to people who don’t have them. All that money to prevent “voter fraud” which study after study shows doesn’t even exist.